As far as the multi-tasking thing goes, I am basically glad to have finally found a use for my severe ADD. When I was younger I spent a lot of time day dreaming and wandering off on tangents, and generally being an angst ridden teenager. It was not really fun to be honest. Now that I have gotten older, I have learned to organize the chaos a little better and I am not "happy" without having more than a few tasks on the to-do list. This is not to say I don't still enjoy life, spend time with the wife and kids, pursuing hobbies, etc. I do that as well, it's how I relax. But if my mind is not occupied, I get bored, and if I get bored, I get restless, and then things start to go downhill from there. Keeping busy is a good thing, for me it's part of the "balance" i need it my life.

As far as the "rat race" thing. I basically left NYC to get away from it, and moved to the Connecticut subburbs where things move much slower. I also quit my high paying job at an advertising company and took a big paycut to get where I am now (a small consultancy). I knew it would be a good move because I knew the owner of the company valued non-work time himself and ran a pretty mellow shop.

As for "how it is affecting me", well right now I feel I have struck that balance, so things are good. But when we lived in NYC, my daughter (4 years old at the time) used to think I "lived at work" and only visited sometimes. To put it plainly, that sucked. When we found out we were going to have twins, I knew that we needed to make a big change and make sacrifices.